Excuse me while I kiss the pavement.....
Running has always been an important part of my life.
My doctors have all told me I should continue to exercise through chemo and believe it or not, IT really does help me to feel better.
So Tuesday around 300 in the afternoon, it was beautiful outside. Sun was shining and the temperature was nice. I had been feeling really tired and I made a decision, go home and take a nap and risk staying up half the night, or go for a run with the dog, take a shower and sleep well. I decided on a run.
I grab Dingo and put his choke chain on him. We head out. We got 3/4's of a mile from home to an area where new houses are being constructed.
There were people in the houses working on them. We had just got to the end of the cul-de-sac and turned around heading up hill.
Dingo heard a noise and turned to investigate. When he did so, he ran right into my feet.
I lost my balance and for a moment, I thought I was going to catch myself. Then it seemed as if gravity plum smacked me in the head and I knew I was going down. On the way down, I turned my body, trying to protect my port which was placed on my right side.
I hit the ground so hard.
My shoulder first and then my head.
At first, I didn't know what hurt more, my head or my shoulder, but I was immediately in a lot of pain.
I am laying on the ground.
I know I cannot get up.
I am crying.
I am trying to stop crying.
Dingo starts scooching his body toward mine until my head is gently resting on his body.
He starts licking my face.
I still cannot get up, but now I'm yelling at the dog. I don't want to be licked.
After what feels like an hour, the construction workers come over to check on me.
I can tell by his face that it must be bad. I ask him for his phone.
I call Sean, at least twice and he doesn't answer.
I call my mom. She also doesn't answer.
I hand the man his phone and try to get up. He tries to help me, but he grabs my right arm, with my hurt shoulder and pulls. I shout out in pain.
I finally get up and try to start walking home.
One of the other construction workers comes to me and says NO, get in the van. Do you live nearby? I say down the street. He says thank God.
Dingo won't get in the back of the van.
I get in the front seat and he jumps on my feet.
The man drives me home. I'm crying the entire time.
Sean comes out and looks at me and gets that same look on his face the others do. He tells me we are going to the emergency room.
He puts me in the car and off we go.
It felt like we were going 1 mile an hour to the hospital.
My lips start tingling.
I'm dizzy.
My brains feel like they are being squeezed out of my head. My shoulder hurts more than I can even describe.
By the time we hit the interstate, I cannot feel my legs. My entire body is tingling. I cannot see. I start puking. At some point, I'm not sure when, everything goes black.
When I wake up, there is a lot of noise and movement. People are asking me questions and I'm having a hard time answering. Someone is cutting my clothes off of me.
They want to know what happened to me but I cannot think straight. I think Sean answers them.
I was sent for a CT scan and an x-ray.
They think my skull is fractured. I don't even care about my head, my shoulder hurts and I'm still tingling everywhere.
When I get to the CT scan, I still cannot stand up. They have to drag me from one bed to the other. My shoulder cracks and I scream out in pain, but there is relief.
I accomplish the CT and am immediately sent to x-ray. After the x-ray, they move me again and my shoulder pops again, but this time in an intensely bad way. I scream out again.
At some point I am given morphine and finally, my head quiets down, but my shoulder never stopped hurting.
The Doc comes in and says the CT is clear and the x-ray shows no fracture.
Sean argues with the doctor.
I asked him to please feel this bump on my shoulder and the doc refuses.
A technician comes in to clean and dress my head wound. It is someone I know.
His name is Claud and he is in my physics class. This is embarrassing. He had to help me dress, get my shoes on and clean/dress my wound.
He was being so gentle with me, but one good thing about chemo is that when my hair fell out, the follicles died. I cannot really feel anything that he is doing.
After a few hours, I think, I'm given a paper gown, a huge bandage for my head (which I still have not seen to this point), a sling to immobilize my arm and a prescription for hydrocodone. The doctor concluded that I likely had a minor concussion and that my shoulder was probably just bruised and because I was going to chemo, it just hurt more to me than it should.
I look like a wreck. I mean, seriously, did I just escape a mental hospital?
I go home and for the next two days, my shoulder pain never goes below extremely painful.
The ER made a followup appointment with my PCM and I saw her on Thursday.
She ordered another x-ray and was very upset at the ER doc for not figuring out what was wrong with my shoulder. It was clearly deformed.
My PCM called me today.
I have a grade 3 separation of the AC joint that will require surgical intervention.
My nurse navigator at the cancer center said that Dr Pippas will need to find out if the chemo made my bones weaker which led to this injury. I have no idea what this means in terms of surgery, treatment and recovery. I was told that they won't preform surgery when you are on chemo because your risk of infection is extremely high due to chemo wiping out your immune system.
It is now Friday night and I have no idea what next week holds for me.
I cannot begin to speculate what Dr Pippas will decide about my treatment. It hurts my heart to try and figure it out. I am not going to waste my energy on that.
For now, I'm just trying to tolerate my excruciating pain. I'm laughing when I think about how I must have looked lying in the middle of the road with a dog for a pillow.
And I'm wondering, does anyone want my dog??
Cherish HOPE
My doctors have all told me I should continue to exercise through chemo and believe it or not, IT really does help me to feel better.
So Tuesday around 300 in the afternoon, it was beautiful outside. Sun was shining and the temperature was nice. I had been feeling really tired and I made a decision, go home and take a nap and risk staying up half the night, or go for a run with the dog, take a shower and sleep well. I decided on a run.
I grab Dingo and put his choke chain on him. We head out. We got 3/4's of a mile from home to an area where new houses are being constructed.
There were people in the houses working on them. We had just got to the end of the cul-de-sac and turned around heading up hill.
Dingo heard a noise and turned to investigate. When he did so, he ran right into my feet.
I lost my balance and for a moment, I thought I was going to catch myself. Then it seemed as if gravity plum smacked me in the head and I knew I was going down. On the way down, I turned my body, trying to protect my port which was placed on my right side.
I hit the ground so hard.
My shoulder first and then my head.
At first, I didn't know what hurt more, my head or my shoulder, but I was immediately in a lot of pain.
I am laying on the ground.
I know I cannot get up.
I am crying.
I am trying to stop crying.
Dingo starts scooching his body toward mine until my head is gently resting on his body.
He starts licking my face.
I still cannot get up, but now I'm yelling at the dog. I don't want to be licked.
After what feels like an hour, the construction workers come over to check on me.
I can tell by his face that it must be bad. I ask him for his phone.
I call Sean, at least twice and he doesn't answer.
I call my mom. She also doesn't answer.
I hand the man his phone and try to get up. He tries to help me, but he grabs my right arm, with my hurt shoulder and pulls. I shout out in pain.
I finally get up and try to start walking home.
One of the other construction workers comes to me and says NO, get in the van. Do you live nearby? I say down the street. He says thank God.
Dingo won't get in the back of the van.
I get in the front seat and he jumps on my feet.
The man drives me home. I'm crying the entire time.
Sean comes out and looks at me and gets that same look on his face the others do. He tells me we are going to the emergency room.
He puts me in the car and off we go.
It felt like we were going 1 mile an hour to the hospital.
My lips start tingling.
I'm dizzy.
My brains feel like they are being squeezed out of my head. My shoulder hurts more than I can even describe.
By the time we hit the interstate, I cannot feel my legs. My entire body is tingling. I cannot see. I start puking. At some point, I'm not sure when, everything goes black.
When I wake up, there is a lot of noise and movement. People are asking me questions and I'm having a hard time answering. Someone is cutting my clothes off of me.
They want to know what happened to me but I cannot think straight. I think Sean answers them.
I was sent for a CT scan and an x-ray.
They think my skull is fractured. I don't even care about my head, my shoulder hurts and I'm still tingling everywhere.
When I get to the CT scan, I still cannot stand up. They have to drag me from one bed to the other. My shoulder cracks and I scream out in pain, but there is relief.
I accomplish the CT and am immediately sent to x-ray. After the x-ray, they move me again and my shoulder pops again, but this time in an intensely bad way. I scream out again.
At some point I am given morphine and finally, my head quiets down, but my shoulder never stopped hurting.
The Doc comes in and says the CT is clear and the x-ray shows no fracture.
Sean argues with the doctor.
I asked him to please feel this bump on my shoulder and the doc refuses.
A technician comes in to clean and dress my head wound. It is someone I know.
His name is Claud and he is in my physics class. This is embarrassing. He had to help me dress, get my shoes on and clean/dress my wound.
He was being so gentle with me, but one good thing about chemo is that when my hair fell out, the follicles died. I cannot really feel anything that he is doing.
After a few hours, I think, I'm given a paper gown, a huge bandage for my head (which I still have not seen to this point), a sling to immobilize my arm and a prescription for hydrocodone. The doctor concluded that I likely had a minor concussion and that my shoulder was probably just bruised and because I was going to chemo, it just hurt more to me than it should.
I look like a wreck. I mean, seriously, did I just escape a mental hospital?
I go home and for the next two days, my shoulder pain never goes below extremely painful.
The ER made a followup appointment with my PCM and I saw her on Thursday.
She ordered another x-ray and was very upset at the ER doc for not figuring out what was wrong with my shoulder. It was clearly deformed.
My PCM called me today.
I have a grade 3 separation of the AC joint that will require surgical intervention.
My nurse navigator at the cancer center said that Dr Pippas will need to find out if the chemo made my bones weaker which led to this injury. I have no idea what this means in terms of surgery, treatment and recovery. I was told that they won't preform surgery when you are on chemo because your risk of infection is extremely high due to chemo wiping out your immune system.
It is now Friday night and I have no idea what next week holds for me.
I cannot begin to speculate what Dr Pippas will decide about my treatment. It hurts my heart to try and figure it out. I am not going to waste my energy on that.
For now, I'm just trying to tolerate my excruciating pain. I'm laughing when I think about how I must have looked lying in the middle of the road with a dog for a pillow.
And I'm wondering, does anyone want my dog??
Cherish HOPE
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